Contents

"Baby, You're a Rich Man" was the result of combining two unfinished songs written by Lennon and McCartney, in a similar fashion to make "A Day in the Life", and "I've Got a Feeling".[4][5] The verses from "One of the Beautiful People" by John Lennon were combined with Paul McCartney's previously unaccompanied "Baby, you're a rich man …" chorus.

That's a combination of two separate pieces, Paul's and mine, put together and forced into one song. One half was all mine. [Sings] 'How does it feel to be one of the beautiful people, now that you know who you are, da da da da.' Then Paul comes in with [sings] 'Baby, you're a rich man,' which was a lick he had around.

It is thought that McCartney wrote the lyrics of his section of the song about the band's manager, Brian Epstein.[5] In response, Lennon jokingly sings "Baby, you're a rich fag Jew" at the end of the song, as Epstein was homosexual and Jewish. Walter Everett writes that the song "asks an unnamed Brian Epstein what it's like to be one of the 'beautiful people.'"[7] Lennon claimed, however, that the meaning of the song was that everybody is a rich man, saying, "The point was stop moaning. You're a rich man and we're all rich men."[6]

The song opens in what appears to be the key of G in Mixolydian mode, a G chord moving to ♭VII/I (Fadd9/G) on "now that you know who you are", all over an G pedal (sustained harmonic tone).[7][8] Soon, however, the song moves to the key of C major and becomes reminiscent of "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)" with its use of non-Western sounding gamak melodies on the clavioline.[7] Pollack considers a notable feature in the refrain ("Baby you're a rich man") to be the bass move from C to G via a ♭III (B♭).[9]

The song was mixed (in mono) on 11 May 1967 at Olympic Sound Studios. The music featured an unusual oboe-like sound which was created with a clavioline (an early forerunner of the synthesiser being a 3 octave monophonic keyboard)[3] and a spin-echo (feed backdelay) effect which was used to fill from the end of one line of the verse to the start of the next.[10]

"Baby, You're a Rich Man" was released as the B-side of the single "All You Need Is Love" on 7 July 1967 in the United Kingdom and on 17 July 1967 in the United States. Later that year, against the Beatles' wishes, it was included on the US album Magical Mystery Tour[12] (made available in both mono and ‘mock stereo’).

Per its original intended use, the song featured in the 1968 film Yellow Submarine (but was not included on the original accompanying soundtrack album).[3]

For a 1971 German release of the Magical Mystery Tour album, George Martin and recording engineerGeoff Emerick created the first true stereo mix of the song; unable to recreate the spin-echo effect that had been included at the mixing stage of the original recording, they simply omitted it.[10]

When standardising the Beatles' catalogue for world-wide Compact Disc release in 1987, the (1971 stereo) Magical Mystery Tour album was included with the otherwise British album line-up.[13]

"Baby, You're a Rich Man" was mixed in stereo for a second time for the 1999 DVD release of the Yellow Submarine film and the accompanying Yellow Submarine Songtrack album.[14]